$NEAR NEAR Rises to $3.48: Secret TVL Milestone and ETF Application

NEAR Protocol (NEAR) reached $3.48 on the morning of September 18, 2026, gaining 29.51% in the last 24 hours. Intraday trading ranged between $2,635 and $3,516, pushing market capitalization above $4.11 billion. This surge is driven by three key developments:

The Secret TVL Milestone and the NEAR@3.33 Program

NEAR’s privacy-focused cross-chain trading pipeline, Confidential Intents, reached a total locked value (TVL) of $70 million on September 15. This threshold triggered a snapshot under the NEAR@3.33 incentive program. According to the program, 333,333 locked NEAR@3.33 tokens will be distributed to eligible users, and these tokens can be converted to NEAR at a 1:1 ratio if the volume-weighted average price of NEAR remains at or above $3.33 for three days. Confidential Intents allows users to transact with higher privacy across more than 30 chains and has recorded over $28 billion in cumulative transaction volume to date.

Grayscale's Spot ETF Application

Grayscale filed an S-1 application with the SEC on January 20, 2026, to convert its NEAR Trust into a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). The application was updated on June 12, adding that BitGo Bank & Trust is designated as the primary custodian, Coinbase Custody as the secondary custodian, and that staking will only be permitted under US law. The application is currently under SEC review. If the ETF is approved, institutional investors will have easier access to NEAR.

AI Narrative

NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin is one of the eight co-authors of the Transformer architecture, a cornerstone of the AI field. Throughout 2026, NEAR has shifted its focus from high-performance Layer 1 competition to infrastructure for chain abstraction, cross-chain consensus, and autonomous AI agents. This strategy positions NEAR in the decentralized AI infrastructure category.

Technical Outlook and Risks

On the daily chart, NEAR is testing the $3,516 resistance level. Upward resistance levels are $3,734 and $3,932. Downward support levels are $2,346 and $1,552. Indicators point to an overbought region in the short term. The sustainability of the price movement depends on the continued growth in Confidential Intents TVL and the SEC process of the Grayscale ETF application.

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